Product Description

Mary Elizabeth Cep (or Lola, as she prefers to be called) longs to be in the spotlight. But when she moves to New Jersey with her family and becomes a student at Dellwood "Deadwood" High, Lola finds the role of resident drama queen already filled, by the Born-to-Win, Born-to-Run-Everything Carla Santini. Carla has always gotten everything she wants — until Lola comes along and snags the lead in the school play. Can Lola survive Carla's attempts at retaliation? Once the curtain goes up on the school play, which drama queen will take center stage?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1137474 in Books
• Released on: 2004-03-23
• Formats: Abridged, Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Binding: Audio CD

From Amazon.com
Mary Elizabeth, a.k.a. Lola, is accustomed to playing the starring role in the fascinating production that is her life. Her pottery-making single mom and bratty twin sisters are merely bit players in Lola's dramatic existence. But all this changes when she is forced to move from her beloved Manhattan to the boring suburbs of New Jersey. According to Lola, "living in the suburbs is like being dead, only with cable TV and pizza delivery." The worst part is that someone has already snagged the coveted Drama Queen of Suburbia title--and that someone is Carla Santini. Carla, who is "sophisticated, beautiful, and radiates confidence the way a towering inferno radiates heat," isn't about to let anyone take away her hard-earned crown. Undaunted, Lola tries out for and wins the lead in the school play, a role much desired by Carla. In retaliation, Carla makes the entire student body give Lola the silent treatment (and in addition scores tickets to a sold-out concert of Lola's favorite rock band). Can Lola crash the concert, crush Carla, and still have enough energy to wow everyone in the school production of Pygmalion? It's all in a day's work for Lola, Teenage Drama Queen.

With Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, Dyan Sheldon has written a classic good girl vs. bad girl story and a rib-tickling romp through the petty kingdom (or in this case, queen-dom) of small-town high school popularity politics. The wide-open ending will have young drama-queens-in-training eagerly searching the shelves for the next installment of Lola's adventures. (Ages 12 and older) --Jennifer Hubert

From Publishers Weekly
When native New Yorker Mary Elizabeth Cep and her "astoundingly unimaginative" family move to New Jersey, Mary Elizabeth, who plans to be an actress some day, changes her name to Lola and zealously begins a campaign to enrich the "humdrum" lives of suburbanites. Unfortunately, Lola's new classmates are not quite ready to receive her guidance. They are too busy worshipping their reigning "drama queen," snooty Carla Santini, who is not about to share the spotlight on- or offstage with anyone, especially a loudmouthed city slicker named Lola. Thus begins the war between Carla and Lola to be No. 1. Carla is armed with sophistication, beauty, confidence and an entourage of admirers. Lola, on the other hand, has only a handful of weapons: an overactive imagination, the lead role in the school play and one loyal friend, Ella, "a free spirit waitingAno, beggingAto be released." Energetic, almost breathless first-person narrative relates Lola's bitter defeats and hard-earned triumphs in her rise to stardom at school. Pitting a deliciously despicable villainess against an irresistible heroine glittering with wit and charm, Sheldon (The Boy of My Dreams) pulls off a hilarious comedy of errors. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Grade 6-10-An exuberant and hilarious celebration of the ups and downs of high school life. Teenaged Mary Elizabeth Cep has been misnamed; her mother calls her the "Drama Queen," but she's known for years that her true name is Lola. "Lola is romantic and mysterious. It's evocative and resonant. It's unusual-as I am." When Lola's divorced mother moves the family from New York City to suburban New Jersey, the teen promptly makes an enemy of Carla Santini, the undisputed head of both the popular "Born-to-Wins" and the smart "Born-to-Run-Everythings." However, Lola becomes friends with quiet Ella Gerard. When Lola beats out Carla for the coveted part of Eliza Doolittle in the school play, the adventure begins. From then on, the book is a nonstop one-upmanship contest between the two girls. Eventually the conflict involves Lola dragging Ella to New York for the last concert and farewell party of the pair's favorite rock group. The friends trek through some seedy neighborhoods while following a drunken rock star, and have a run-in with the police before they return feeling triumphant. Lola will rightfully take her place among the unforgettable and lively female characters of young adult novels. Like its heroine, the story is off-beat, outrageous, and utterly charming.
Jane Halsall, McHenry Public Library District, IL
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Fluffy and hilarious
I love this book, even though it is lighter than cotton candy and doesn't touch on any real issues very much. The sequel, "My Perfect Life", is more serious.
Lola (Mary Elizabeth) is a wonderful, vivacious, flamboyant herione who quite frankly reminds me of me sometimes. She'll snare you from the openning paragraph, explaining how her parents named her the wrong, ordinary, boring name.
She exaggerates constantly, bringing wit and charm to her descriptions of high school life. Oh, and she's a great liar.
Don't be deterred by the dumb movie...read this book as soon as you can! (okay, that sounds like a lame ad)

The queen of Drama
When I first started reading this book I was like ' How dull some freaky girl who is basically a as the title says Drama queen.' But as i got into the book I realised that Lola ( as she prefers to be called, is a lot more than that. Like any teenage girl of course. This story tell sabout a spontanious girl who isn't afraid to show how crazy she truly is.

Teenage Life
This book is about a teenager who is dealing with hard things teenagers go through. I did like this book because this girl was confident in what she did and she handled things great. Yes, I recommend other people to read this book because it shows the difficulties teenagers go through and it enlightens you in a way where you understand har life. The dialogue was believable because that's the way teenagers are today. My favorite character was Mary because she was confident, bright, and cheerful. I did not like Carla because she was rude to people who were not popular. The author wrote in a way that I could picture what was happening.